The
Folly That Is EuropeAiming
for the EU is a Mistake

Next
month's summit meeting of European Union leaders in Thessalonica
has prompted increasing speculation about the future role
of the Brussels bureaucratic behemoth in Balkans affairs.
The Empire is preoccupied with reshaping the Middle East 
though if its Balkans "successes"
are anything to go by, that's another developing disaster.
Russia has pulled
out, daunted by rising costs and waning influence. It
seems as if the EU has a chance to make the Balkans its proving
ground yet again. The last time it did so, in the early 1990s,
the result was an unmitigated disaster. There is no indication
this time would be any different.

Consider
the advice
of George Soros, the billionaire puppet-master of Balkan NGOs,
to EU luminaries: give Kosovo independence, break apart Serbia
and Montenegro, and abolish the Dayton Agreement in Bosnia
in favor of a unitary state  then forbid any further changes
in borders. It's a proposal that manages to be stupid, irrational,
and anti-Serb at the same time, a no small feat. It
also represents a position most Soros-funded NGOs have advocated
for quite some time. Finally, it would not only not
resolve any of the Balkans issues, but make them exponentially
worse.

Europe
or Empire?

There
is some disagreement among European and American analysts
as to the ultimate loyalty of the "Western Balkans":
the New Europe or the American Imperium? There shouldn't be.
Balkans leaders have shown loyalty to whomever they believe
the strongest, and that is currently without question the
Imperium.

In
fact, rather than present an alternative to the hegemon, Europe
is far more likely to remain
its servant. Balkan leaders seem to know this, as they
speak of "full integration into European and Euro-Atlantic
structures," an euphemism for NATO, as well as the
EU. So, though Washington's recent efforts to bully its vassals
into giving US troops immunity from war crimes prosecution
were met with resistance
in Croatia (and the expected obsequiousness
in Bosnia), as part of "New Europe" Balkans satrapies
are likely to be satellites as dedicated as Poland.

Economic
Pipe Dreams

Last
Thursday, leaders of Albania, Croatia, Macedonia and Serbia
appealed
to EU leaders on the pages of International Herald Tribune,
claiming that without the "integration" of the Balkans,
Europe's unification would not be complete, and its security
would in fact be threatened. To hear them say it, the EU is
this Promised Land where all Balkan problems will be not so
much resolved as dissolved in economic bliss. They
could not be more wrong.

In
their missive, the four leaders seek "effective ways
of reducing the unacceptably high levels of unemployment and
low investment" and the need to "find jobs for ordinary
people who want a decent living wage for honest work."
But Europe's unemployment levels are rather high, consequence
of restrictive taxation
and welfare programs that create disincentives to work and
prosperity. Neither the EU bureaucrats nor the Balkans satraps
really understand that people who want honest jobs are perfectly
willing to create them, unless the government prevents
them from doing so by forcing them into a completely useless
"education," or setting tax rates that make honest
work impossible, or both.

Best
showcasing their arrogance and ignorance of economic matters
is their claim that Balkans countries "have an educated
and resourceful work force, but we need to know how best to
deploy their skills." As if those skills were bombs to
be "deployed," and that decision was the government's
to make!

Commies
Never Left

This
execrable disdain for individual liberty, coupled with an
equal disregard for private property, indicate that Balkan
states are all too eager to embrace the variation of a system
they've just escaped (or think they have, anyway). After
the ravages of war, many of their people claim they'd lived
better under Communism. To an extent, that is true: Communists
knew better than to launch wholesale destruction and unrestrained
plunder on the population that was their source of sustenance.
Their heirs don't seem to suffer from that reservation.

The
problem is that Balkans socialism was never really abolished.
It "evolved" into Democracy
rather peacefully, just before the "new" governments unleashed
the social-democratic Succession Wars. The outer trappings
of the system may have perished, substituted in places by
the equally superficial trappings of nationalism, but its
main principle endured.

Though
"democratic" by declaration, Balkan governments
lie somewhere between socialism and national-socialism. The
bedrock of their political philosophy is that people exist
to serve the State, and that needs of the State always trump
those of the individual. Worse yet, there is no coherent set
of values and principles any of those governments are founded
on, save for a brutal Machiavellian "pragmatism."

None
of this will go away if and when the "Western Balkans"
joins the Union of European Socialist Republics (and some
quasi-monarchies, too). If anything, it will become even more
entrenched and difficult to defeat. And that explains
the politicians' fervor for EU membership.

Protecting
the Plunder

After
the Nazi occupation, in 1946, the Communist "liberators"
proceeded to "liberate" the people of Yugoslavia
of their private property. Land, housing, factories, mines...
everything was "nationalized," with a few exceptions
such as shops and small farms. The notion that all this was
the rightful property of the State survived the transformation
of Communism on the eve of the Succession Wars. Balkan "presidents"
thus treated their countries as their private fiefdoms, and
their inhabitants as no more than medieval serfs. This treatment
continues even today  unsurprisingly, as there has been no structural
change in the prevailing political ideology.

This
is exemplified in the process of "privatization."
Rather than divest itself from plundered property, governments
sold enterprises to investors and housing to residents, but
retained ownership of the land itself  and in many
cases, even the buildings. Moreover, the buyers were almost
always government cronies. This is why one cannot trust Balkan
governments when they proclaim a war
on organized crime. They are organized crime.

In
Croatia, Serbs who return after years in exile cannot
reclaim their property, "given" by the state
to Croat refugees. They have to fight a lengthy battle against
the entire government apparatus just to get what is theirs,
while the government insists it would be "unjust"
to evict the squatters without providing housing for them.
Besides being clearly aimed to discourage Serb returns, this
policy reveals that Croatian rulers have little or no understanding
of the principle of private property.

Bosnia
has retained the socialist property laws almost entirely.
In Sarajevo, for example, real estate development remained
for the longest time under effective control of Alija Izetbegovic's
son, Bakir, head of the Urban Planning Commission. When socialist-era
apartment towers were privatized, only the actual apartments
were sold off  not the buildings themselves, or the land
they were on. Those are still in legal limbo, causing the
already shoddy infrastructure to fall dangerously into disrepair.
Residents of pre-1945 buildings are in limbo as well, because
current laws on real estate ownership (!) forbid their privatization
while the Restitution Bill is being blocked by the viceroy.

Serbian
regime is equally
reluctant to restore plundered property to its rightful
owners. Doing so would "cost the government money,"
as it would need to compensate owners whose properties have
been modified and cannot be returned outright, and definitely
lose the potential to profit from selling the property. (Notice
the assumption that the government has a "right"
to profit from plunder!) Instead, the regime is offering the
surviving plunder victims (the Communists shot tens of thousands
of "enemies of the people" after "liberating"
them) the utterly worthless 30-year government bonds. Serbia's
Democrats
have run up a huge international debt already and stifled
any potential for economic growth through confiscatory taxation,
so it's hard to see where the money to pay those bonds would
come from. No wonder the claimants are rejecting the offer
out of hand. The government, on the other hand, is in no hurry
to "lose" money when it can "make"
money by selling off its plunder.

As
An Aside

This
situation also reflects on the plight of Kosovo, as "government
property" is now being redistributed
by the occupying authorities to Albanian claimants, on spurious
grounds at best. Because the UN and NATO chose to interpret
the Kumanovo armistice as unconditional surrender, they've
assumed the right to administer "state property"
in Kosovo as the "property of the state" of Kosovo,
for all intents and purposes.

But
Belgrade doesn't think of Kosovo as illegally occupied; this
would imply some adherence to principle, and that is so very
1999 for the modern politicians. Rather, they try to argue
that the occupiers aren't enforcing their own officially proclaimed
goals of multi-ethnicity, human rights and democracy. Since
the occupiers can define those any which way they want  and
do so  this policy is futile. Furthermore, even Belgrade's
legitimate objections are dismissed
and derided by UNMIK. So much for the vaunted "partnership"
with the "international community." Oh yes, that
equality and respect in world affairs are just around the
corner. Any day now.

Servant
Mentality

The
desire to join the EU isn't altogether irrational. Weak-minded
people often seek more powerful they can follow  or in the
case of Balkan leaders, they are sought out by the powerful
as willing servants. The leaders see joining the EU and NATO
as the equivalent of finally being a "part of the gang."
Plus, the Eurocracy would protect their power and privilege.
The people, conditioned by decades of government education,
see a panacea for all their economic problems, a source of
"free money" and salvation from their own corrupt
rulers (oh, the irony!). They do not realize that money
is never free, or that their current rulers will still
be in charge.

The
Real Reforms

From
Zagreb to Skopje, Balkan leaders talk incessantly of "reforms"
and determination
to join the EU. All those "reforms" accomplish is
strengthen the government: "rule of law" often means
a police state, while "tax reform" translates into
more rapacious plundering. There was no fundamental reform
of the state, and there cannot ever be, because the government
is by definition incapable of reforming its own nature. No,
what they really mean is reforming the people into
more pliable servants of the government.

The
past decade has clearly demonstrated the fruits of such an
approach. Governments cannot produce anything, least of all
economic development. They only consume, whether money, lives,
resources, honor, courage, sanity, or hope.

To
be fair, it is entirely possible that some politicians may
honestly believe they are trying to do good for their people.
But even if they realize that government is the biggest obstacle
to anything resembling prosperity, the amount of power those
governments have right now would tempt a saint. And there
are very few saints in the Balkans.

About
Freedom

All
this discussion on the merits of Europe, or the Empire, really
comes down to this: there is no prosperity without freedom.
There can be no freedom without choice. The EU, and the Empire,
have done everything in their ever-increasing power to make
sure no one can make choices they don't approve of  and by
definition, there will be fewer of those as time goes by.

So,
freedom is slavery; ignorance is knowledge; war is peace.
"1984" truly came, albeit on a statist (and
hence inefficient and delayed) schedule.

After
fighting so long for liberation (though at times, not necessarily
liberty), the Balkans are now clamoring to be enslaved.
A proud group of nations has become broken, pathetic shadows
of their ancestors  whose very culture and traditions they
are now being compelled to renounce in the name of false prosperity.

This
is insane. Suicidal. Ludicrous. Misguided. Just plain wrong,
any which way you slice it.

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Nebojsa
Malic left his home in Bosnia after the Dayton Accords and
currently resides in the United States. During the Bosnian
War he had exposure to diplomatic and media affairs in Sarajevo,
and contributed to the Independent.
As a historian who specializes in international relations
and the Balkans, Malic has written numerous essays on the
Kosovo War, Bosnia and Serbian politics. His exclusive column
for Antiwar.com appears every Thursday.